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10-10-2022, 11:15 AM
Nirmal Ghosh
US Bureau Chief
PUBLISHED AUG 2, 2022, 8:00 AM SGT
WASHINGTON - The global community needs to treat new virus outbreaks as a common challenge without allowing blame and politics to hamper the response, says one of the world's foremost experts on zoonotic diseases, bat immunology and pathogen discovery, Professor Wang Linfa.
"Covid-19 taught us a lesson that we have to work at a high level with sustainable funding and with real transparency and regional and international collaboration," said the professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
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The 62-year-old was part of the team that traced the origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2002-2004 to wildlife - specifically, bats.
He is currently also the inaugural Executive Director of Singapore's Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response.
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He added: "The Sars-CoV-2 virus, or Covid-19, emerged in Wuhan. Initially…all the (cases) doctors were seeing were classed as severe pneumonia. But as soon as the virologists got onto it, within…seven to 10 days they were able to nail it down to say it's a new virus closely related to Sars-CoV-1. So, scientifically, you can say, we learnt a lot.
"Yet in terms of the international collaboration and also the way we contain the virus, the way we share the information, I think that there's still a lot to be learnt or to be improved."
"There was so much politics involved," he noted, citing "the blame game…(of) China versus the outside".
"I'm not here to judge who's right, who's wrong," he said.
But "once you start this kind of blame game, and try to even go to the extent to say 'you have to pay the world for the damage', then... you create an environment (in which) nobody wants to be responsible - and hence nobody wants you to discover the virus in their nation or in their region."
"And that to me, is very sad, because we should be opening up rather than closing down, and we should be totally doing this apolitically and fighting the common enemy regardless of where the virus started.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/unite...ses-expert
US Bureau Chief
PUBLISHED AUG 2, 2022, 8:00 AM SGT
WASHINGTON - The global community needs to treat new virus outbreaks as a common challenge without allowing blame and politics to hamper the response, says one of the world's foremost experts on zoonotic diseases, bat immunology and pathogen discovery, Professor Wang Linfa.
"Covid-19 taught us a lesson that we have to work at a high level with sustainable funding and with real transparency and regional and international collaboration," said the professor of emerging infectious diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
......
The 62-year-old was part of the team that traced the origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2002-2004 to wildlife - specifically, bats.
He is currently also the inaugural Executive Director of Singapore's Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response.
......
He added: "The Sars-CoV-2 virus, or Covid-19, emerged in Wuhan. Initially…all the (cases) doctors were seeing were classed as severe pneumonia. But as soon as the virologists got onto it, within…seven to 10 days they were able to nail it down to say it's a new virus closely related to Sars-CoV-1. So, scientifically, you can say, we learnt a lot.
"Yet in terms of the international collaboration and also the way we contain the virus, the way we share the information, I think that there's still a lot to be learnt or to be improved."
"There was so much politics involved," he noted, citing "the blame game…(of) China versus the outside".
"I'm not here to judge who's right, who's wrong," he said.
But "once you start this kind of blame game, and try to even go to the extent to say 'you have to pay the world for the damage', then... you create an environment (in which) nobody wants to be responsible - and hence nobody wants you to discover the virus in their nation or in their region."
"And that to me, is very sad, because we should be opening up rather than closing down, and we should be totally doing this apolitically and fighting the common enemy regardless of where the virus started.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/unite...ses-expert
